


here is my hand, my heart

by belatrix



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, Guilt, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Pining, Plot What Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 19:54:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18923962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: Mostly, Tony had tried not to look.He still does. Try, that is. It’s just― it’s getting a little bit harder every day.





	here is my hand, my heart

**Author's Note:**

> ― half of this was written before I watched endgame, when I still cheerfully expected it would all turn out fine, so please forgive how blatantly this ignores everything canon, let’s just pretend IW got resolved very differently (and without a time skip)
> 
> ― handwaving all plot away
> 
> ― was this originally meant to be a 1k speedwrite? …maybe. it *clenches fist* got away from me
> 
> ― no really, what plot

 

 

 

 

 

(One year and fourteen days after the grand battle, after the grand victory, after the grand―

― _after_ , he’ll wake up late on twisted, stained sheets, wonder how he managed to sleep at all, and think: what the fuck have I _done_?

A faint rustle beside him, the covers moving, Peter’s little sigh muffled by a pillow. The sun, glaring through the windows because he didn’t remember to draw the curtains closed last night.)

 

 

 

There is, faded at the edges and lined down the middle from all the folding and unfolding, tucked away in the back pocket of an old pair of jeans Tony only wears in the lab, a photograph of Peter.

He doesn’t remember how it got there.

It must have been one of the first days, when Tony had only just been dragged back to Earth, half dead and half wishing that they’d just let him fucking _die_ , thank you very much ―that brief, hazy time before he’d eventually, inevitably, kicked himself into auto pilot with the single-minded intent of saving the world. When life was a blur of people’s hollow, concerned gazes and the phantom trail of ashes everywhere, in his dreams, on his hands, scratching down his throat, sticking to his clothes, swirling against a backdrop of burnt, bleeding skies.

He must have done a lot of things back then that he can’t quite recall. As it turns out, crying and drinking over a single, badly-lit, grainy picture of a smiling Peter was one of them.

“Huh,” Tony says when he shifts over a worktable and feels something shift in his pocket, too.

And proceeds to try not to look _too_ shocked when he fishes it out and sees just what it is.

“Mr. Stark?” Peter calls from across the lab, sounding wary. He sweeps a hologram display of the latest upgrade Tony’s designed for his web-shooters aside and sways a little forward, on instinct, one hand reaching out like he’s preparing to catch Tony mid-fall. “Is… is everything okay?”

His face is pinched, something so _concerned_ passing over his features. Tony’s attempt at casual nonchalance must have failed spectacularly, then.

Tony swallows, folds the photo in two and then four, shoves it unceremoniously back in his pocket. The front right one this time.

“A-okay, kid,” he says, and there, his voice is haughty enough, nothing amiss about it. He’s usually good at this, as he should, hundreds upon hundreds of perfectly theatric speeches and TV interviews can verify it; a tone that gives nothing away except for what Tony wants it to, a smile measured to the millimeter.

It doesn’t fool Peter, of course, because Peter’s not that easy. “What was that?” he says, brows drawing together. His gaze lingers on the waistband of Tony’s jeans.

“Nothing.” Tony waves a hand, dismissive. He thinks said hand might have started trembling, just the barest bit. “Old grocery list, God knows how long it’s been there, isn’t even mine. Bruce, _apparently_ , wanted me to get him pop tarts at some point ―did you know Bruce likes pop tarts? Does that seem weird to you, Bruce liking pop tarts?”

Peter gives him silence and a _look_ , pointed and prolonged.

It reminds Tony of Rhodey, of Pepper ―the practiced, eloquent, ‘I know you’re trying to bullshit me about something but I’ll be generous enough to let it slide for the moment, because you’ll just keep rambling and dancing around it, and you’ve been up for forty-eight hours and I’m worried and I love you’ look.

 _That_ look.

Seeing it on Peter’s face is disorienting, and Tony suddenly just wants to sit down.

“Anyway,” he says, doing a good impression of not caring, even though the thing with his pretenses is, the kid’s been steadily getting better at seeing through them, “whatever, enough with the commercial break, back to work now.”

Peter holds his gaze for a few heavy seconds that hum with something Tony doesn’t want to name, but in the end he relents, returning to his worktable without another word, letting out a small, thoughtful hum Tony pretends he doesn’t hear.

They don’t say much else for the rest of the day. Tony pulls the photo out again after Peter’s left, stares at it like it might hold the answers to something, _anything_ , but it doesn’t.

It’s just a wrinkled piece of paper.

Peter grins up at him through it, bright-eyed, dimpled, shirt two sizes too big on him. There’s a small pimple on his cheek, and his hair is mussed.

Tony considers throwing it away. Doesn’t.

 

 

 

(Tony slips out of bed without waking Peter, searches around for his clothes as quietly as he can.

His headspace’s floating fuzzy, his mouth is dry, his skin sticky to the touch. He feels like someone’s reached a hand inside his ribcage and messed up a lot of wires somewhere.

Behind him, Peter lets out a little snuffling snore and it makes something clench in Tony’s chest, sudden and pained and horribly, unbearably fond.

The kid’s drawn the comforter up to his chin, legs drawn up into his body, a soft, cloud-white cocoon enveloping him, anchoring him to Tony’s bed.  His face looks calm. Serene. Like he’s having a nice dream after god knows how long, and Tony tries to quell the swift, selfish sort of satisfaction that swells up inside him at the thought that he might be responsible for this, that Peter falling asleep with Tony’s arms around him was somehow the only thing enough to keep his nightmares at bay.

He’d like to feel nothing but shame for last night. He’d like to be able to do a great many things.

Peter shifts under the covers, and Tony has to duck around the hoodie and the pair of Zara jeans strewn across the carpet on his way to the door. He very purposefully does not think about how the kind of hoodies and Zara jeans favored by College Kids Today aren’t exactly clothing items that should be scattered on his bedroom floor, and he very purposefully avoids looking at Peter’s underwear ―a glaring antithesis to his clothes, black, CK, so very grown-up, _we’re all adults here, Mr. Stark_ ― crumpled and forgotten at the foot of the bed.

He chances one last glance at Peter curled up in his sheets before walking out the room, and _there_ ’s an image he’ll never be able to get out of his head.

Peter looks like he belongs in that bed, and one of these days, Tony’s going to forget that he doesn’t.

Their floor, in its entirety, is too quiet, too empty. Nat is on a SHIELD-issued assignment somewhere in Eastern Europe, Clint with Laura and the kids; Bruce, very unwillingly but at everyone’s insistence, on a short vacation at Rhodey’s farm property out west; Steve’s been in Wakanda with Barnes for the past six months, and Thor hasn’t left New Asgard for even longer than that.

It’s almost a comfort, this blurred, unexpected, eerie silence. It is, at least, one thing Tony doesn’t have to worry about. No one’s around to see his ruffled hair and bitten, bruised mouth and get the right idea. No one’s around to _know_.

It might just have been the universe testing him, waiting to see if Tony would take the bait, if he’d jump through the proverbial window as soon as it opened, dangerous and inviting.

Well, Tony had.

That’s the catch, isn’t it, the not-all-that-funny punch line his entire existence seems to be built and teetering on ―the things he knows he shouldn’t do and the things he ends up doing, they overlap far more often than they don’t.

His life’s Venn diagram is a joke like that.

He makes his way to the kitchen feeling something vaguely sick and panicky tugging at him, restless like he’s been running from something.

The light slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows makes every stainless steel surface glow almost painfully bright, sunbeams reflecting and ricocheting, painting the whole place gold and chrome silver. If he was hung-over, it would be torture. He’s not, is the point. He hadn’t had any alcohol, and on any other day, it might’ve made him moderately proud of himself. Right now, all it does is serve as a glaring, judgmental reminder that it was all _him_ , no drunkenness, no flimsy, patented excuses. No questionable reasoning to hide behind.

Only Tony, and his utter, famed, quite impressive inability to keep his hands to himself.

There’s a dull, muted ache all along his back where Peter scratched him, fervently, desperately, like he hadn’t been able to hold Tony close enough. He may or may not have drawn blood. Tony doesn’t want to check.

His teeth are clenched as he makes coffee slowly, mechanically, breathing in and out through his nose like he’s trying to ward off a panic attack. There are a thousand things burned into his brain, forever. A treasury of secrets like pinpricks, like radio static blaring without remorse inside his head:

The way Peter had looked at him, with those eyes that were so warm and focused and devastatingly determined, with all the solemn gravity of someone who’s known death in the marrow, and said― _you know, I’ve never had anyone who wanted to fight the whole universe just ‘cause I wasn’t in it anymore_.

His hands, small and strong and sweaty as they slipped and clutched the sheets and tangled with Tony’s.

The quiet, surprised sound he made when Tony first pushed inside him, the way his mouth fell open on a small, pink _oh_ , that open expression of pulsing, naked _trust_ before that, when he let Tony lay him down and settle between his legs.

Those breathless little moans when Tony started going harder, faster ―the line of his bared throat, his messy curls, the hot, wet exhales against Tony’s neck, that high-pitched, ardent litany of _yes, yes, yes, Tony_ ―Peter had never said his name, before. That was the first time, with Peter’s nails leaving frantic scratches on Tony’s skin like torn-up love letters, with his head thrown back and flushed teeth marks blooming on his shoulder where Tony bit down, hard, until Peter cried out and Tony realized what he was doing, pulled away and started kissing him instead.

Tony wants to hear that again.

Tony… shouldn’t want to hear that again.

It can wait. Facing Peter and that painfully honest face, sometimes resolute, sometimes unsure, like when he drowsily asked Tony if he could stay, after, like he truly thought there was a world where Tony would kick him out of bed. Facing the bruises Tony left, if they haven’t already faded, and the conversation they’ll have to have.

It can all wait.

Right now, all Tony has to do is calm his heartbeat and drink his coffee, and then maybe drink another one. Order in some breakfast for Peter, too.

The kid had mentioned once that he loved the panettone French toast they served at Princi ―May had only let him go there three times, he’d said, because it was _super expensive_. But that toast was _so_ _awesome, Mr. Stark_.

He has no idea if they even have a delivery service. Well. He’s pretty sure they will if Tony Stark asks nicely.)

 

 

 

Mostly, Tony had tried not to look.

He still does. Try, that is. It’s just― it’s getting a little bit harder every day.

Example 1:

“Mr. Stark? You’re… you’re kinda staring?”

Peter’s resting his chin on a balled fist, elbow propped up on the dinner table that no one really uses that much. There is an assortment of apologies already getting trapped behind Tony’s teeth but Peter cuts him off, hastily, “hey, it’s okay, I don’t mind!”

 _You should mind_ , Tony doesn’t say, has to forcibly turn himself away and pour a glass of water, something for his hands to do, something to hide behind.

It’s day twenty-three of staying on the wagon, or, at the very least, half-heartedly trying to.

The sheer happiness and pride this herculean task seems to have lit up in Peter’s eyes is maybe worth all the effort.

“You know what,” he says, knocking the water back like he would whiskey, “you should probably call me out for being creepy more often, Pete.”

Peter makes an indignant sound. “You’re not _creepy_ ,” he says, gaze finding Tony’s, pinning it there. It should be unsettling, how easy it is for the kid to do that, draw Tony in and keep him paying attention like a guard dog. “I just. You looked like you were spacing out a bit, that’s all.”

This is not a conversation Tony can have right now.

Because, the thing is―

The fucking _thing_ is, there are times when he’s looking away, and something _catches_ in his throat, makes his stomach tighten with a fear so sudden and primal that it eclipses all thought and reason, and then he has to look again, make sure Peter’s still there, still _here_ , with his haphazard hair and his science puns stamped across his ill-fitting shirts and his exhausting, bouncing energy and his smiles and his kindness, here and alive and solid, not teetering into that first stumbling step towards Tony all over again, _I don’t know what’s happening_ , _I don’t wanna go_ , arms open like a plea, like he honestly believes Tony can catch him, help him, save him.

No, Tony truly can’t have this conversation. If he does, he won’t be able to un-have this conversation.

“Yeah, I guess I _was_ spacing out there, wasn’t I,” he says, sets the glass down with perhaps more force than he meant. It makes a sharp clang that reverberates, and Peter controls the flinch, but not well enough. “Jesus, sorry, kid, I―”

“Mr. Stark, it’s _okay_ , what are you even sorry for―”

Tony laughs and it comes out scratchy, messy, a thing ripped from his throat like a cough.

“This?” He waves a hand vaguely around, as if an incomprehensible rotation of his wrist could encompass all the reasons he has to be apologizing to the kid. “The glass, for starters, your sensory overload, I keep forgetting about that, and the staring, obviously, I realize that was inappropriate, I really didn’t―”

“It wasn’t,” Peter says, with feeling. He’s leaning forward, now, both palms splayed on the table, a nearly imploring look on his face. “It _wasn’t_ , Mr. Stark, it’s okay.”

 _It’s okay_. Tony’s lost count of how many times Peter has said that, lately, doesn’t want to dwell on what that eager repetition might mean.

And that’s the other thing ―Tony catches Peter staring too, sometimes. Like he just happened to glance over and forgot to look away.

The kid doesn’t look at him with that slack-jawed awe anymore, starstruck and stuttering like Tony was personally responsible for the creation of the moon before single-handedly hanging it in the sky. There’s something new on his face, these days, something like recognition, like familiarity, a visible ease softening his features when he spots Tony in the room, any room.

He still fumbles and flushes sometimes, the vestiges of a self-conscious teenage crush somehow lingering even after everything, but that relief is still there, like knowing that Tony’s close is somehow enough to keep Peter rooted, grounded, feeling safe, the same way having Peter close is for Tony.

Or maybe Tony’s just projecting.

There are days when he really, truly wishes he’s just projecting.

Tony lets out a breath, feels it rattle as it leaves him. “It’s really not okay, kid,” he mutters, rubbing a hand down the side of his face. He thinks he can feel a headache coming on. It’s been a long day, a long week, a long fucking _year_ and Tony’s tired, he’s tired and exhausted and _spent_ , and the weight of those brown eyes on him isn’t helping the things that rear their ugly heads at night and keep him awake, it’s not helping them one bit.

Peter frowns, opens his mouth like he’s about to say something terribly profound, seems to rethink, closes it again. Maybe he’s losing track of the story, just like Tony is. Maybe there’s a point in there somewhere in all their double-speak conversations and Peter’s gotten tired of it too.

In the end the kid just exhales, mirroring him, long and slow through his nose, and hops off his chair to walk up to Tony with a look of determination that is inspiring.

His hand burns through the fabric of Tony’s shirt when Peter reaches out to touch him, but it’s light, reassuring, the weight of it barely there. Tony thinks about pulling away, doesn’t quite know if he wants to pull away.

“You should get some sleep, Mr. Stark,” Peter says, out of nowhere, soft and decisive.

Tony chuckles with what he could swear is a passable attempt at flighty unconcern. “Not you too, kid. I got Rhodey for that stuff. And the bots. I have a lot of babysitter bots.”

“Yeah, but I’m here now,” Peter says and, fantastic, this is one of _those_ times, when he sounds so worried and sweet and earnest it breaks Tony’s fucking heart. “FRIDAY, how many hours did he sleep last night?”

“ _Twenty-three minutes, Peter_ ,” she promptly replies, and Tony is seriously contemplating doing some hard re-programming right about now.

“Not your responsibility to tuck me in, I’m a big boy, I know how beds work,” Tony says, but Peter’s already pushing at him slightly, and Tony follows, letting himself be steered towards the hall that leads to the elevators.

Peter’s mouth is set and his face is serious, like he honestly believes there’s something wrong with Tony a good night’s sleep can fix.

Or maybe like he really wishes he could believe that. Tony’s… not the only one who’s had trouble coping. He’s stumbled into the kid, awake and bleary-eyed, wandering aimlessly around the compound in the middle of the night enough times that it’s been made clear Tony doesn’t have a monopoly on nightmares.

Peter’s hand is still on Tony’s back, unmoving, protective, and it’s not right. _I should be the one taking care of you_ , Tony wants to say, but the words get stuck under his tongue, heavy like lead, like swallowing something acidic, something that went down wrong. _I should be the one_ ―

“Just,” Peter says. His voice is very small, but it doesn’t shake. “Just try to get some rest, Mr. Stark.”

His fingers stroke up and down Tony’s arm, soothing, reassuring. His eyes look old, too damn old for his face.

“Yeah,” Tony says, giving up, because it’s easier than the alternative. He reaches out to ruffle Peter’s hair like an afterthought. “Yeah, okay, kid. I’ll try, scout’s honor.”

He goes to bed and Peter’s face doesn’t swim with painful, alarming clarity behind his eyes when he closes them, and that’s already a lie right there.

 

Example 2:

“Seriously, Mr. Stark, we could always put on something you’ll like too,” Peter says while they’re watching _Rogue One_ on the couch.

He’s wearing an old, soft grey henley of Tony’s that’s constantly slipping down his shoulder, his feet are on the glass coffee table and Tony isn’t thinking about how thin his ankles are, how he could wrap a hand around one and probably have his fingers meet.

“I like Star Wars just fine, kid,” Tony says. “Been a fan since before you were born, if you’d like to know.”

“I’m sure.” Peter shifts, nestles more comfortably into the leather cushions. “Well, I mean, _technically_ this is not the same really old cast and characters _you_ grew up with, Mr. Stark, so.”

Tony brings a hand to his heart, fakes a wounded frown. “That was a low blow, young Padawan.”

Peter laughs, a little, and the sound funnels and burrows through Tony where their arms are almost touching. If he moved a little to the side, they’d be pressed flush together.

The kid’s been rubbing absently at his own thigh, which Tony has come to realize is a thing Peter usually does when his legs are falling asleep from sitting in one place for too long, but he doesn’t want to move yet because Tony’s still there, next to him.

It’s another piece of him Tony’s taken and kept, tucked carefully away in a locked, private corner of his brain, along with all the little things that leave Tony’s fingers itching and his mouth parched.

Like how Peter looks when he gets up in the morning and how his nose still crinkles when he gingerly sips from Tony’s coffee. The slight hitch in his breath every time Tony accidentally brushes up against him in the lab. How some days he looks like a child and others like he’s a thousand years old, how Peter’s eyes sometimes slip to Tony’s mouth, how it’s been happening more, and more, and more. How he gives Tony smiles the way lovers give gifts, sometimes grandly, flashy cheer shaping his mouth, but sometimes without even thinking about it, soft and warm and secret like those smiles ought to belong to him, like Tony was meant to have them all along.

There are nights, fingertips trailing a bottle of vodka but not opening it, working to add something new to Peter’s suit, thinking madly _I’ll go insane if I lose him again_ , _I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes away_ , that Tony is certain this can only end in disaster.

“I _knew_ you were a closet nerd,” Peter’s saying next to him, and Tony turns to look.

The corner of Peter’s mouth is tugged into a pleased little smirk, his profile pale and illuminated by the flashing light from the TV. But then he seems to deflate, somehow, and Tony sees him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“I just, I thought maybe you wouldn’t―” Peter bites his lip, seems to falter, seems to reconsider, “―nothing, never mind.”

It’s moments like this, secret like whispered confessions, when all Tony can think about is how close they are.

Which is not _unusual_. The closeness. Over the past few months, tactility has become a language between them. It’s a comfort, and a reassurance. _I’m here, I’m okay. We’re okay_. Tony touching Peter’s wrist when he sees the kid’s hands might start shaking. Peter hugging him, pulling Tony close, unafraid to crush him in his arms, when he knows Tony’s had a slew of nightmares the night before.

They have touch if they have one thing, if they have anything, and Tony isn’t always sure if either of them could survive losing that, not now, not any more.

But this ―the rare, slow evenings with the world perfectly safe and superhero-life drowsy and domestic, no real excuse to reach out just to feel Peter’s warmth under his hands― _this_ is probably something that should not be happening.

Tony keeps looking, and now Peter’s looking too, eyes glittering under feather-bright eyelashes, head tipped towards Tony with anticipation, and no, it’s something that should definitely not be happening.

His brain is on excruciating zoom mode, zeroing in on pretty brown eyes, then a small nose, then soft, slightly wet lips. The vulnerable column of Peter’s throat, the delicate rise of his cheekbones.

“Yeah, I get it, kid,” Tony says, tries very hard to make it sound light, unaffected. “You figured a movie filled with epic doomed battles and people tragically dying on alien planets might not exactly cheer me up, here, huh.”

Peter lets out a sound that could’ve been a chuckle, leans closer until his breath is fanning over Tony’s mouth, stuttered and warm. He smells like the hot chocolate Tony made for him earlier, and Tony needs to turn away, needs to _look_ away.

That goddamn henley is still sliding down Peter’s shoulder, and that pale expanse of skin glows soft and beautiful in the TV light.

Christ, not beautiful. Tony didn’t mean to think the word _beautiful_.

“Yeah―” Peter’s voice, hushed and careful and so, so close, “something like that.”

There are moments in Tony’s life when he swears, he can see himself on the brink of doing something horribly, catastrophically _wrong_ , and it’s as if one half of him is rushing to stop it while yelling ‘ _no’_ in that deep, resounding, digitally manipulated slow-motion voice from b-movies ―and the other half just refuses to _listen_ , and blindly plunges right ahead.

He sees himself reach out before his hand has cross-referenced with his brain, fingers suddenly clutching the fabric of that shirt right where it’s bunched up under Peter’s collarbone.

Peter makes a low, wounded sound in the back of his throat, goes perfectly still, lips parting.

Tony tugs at the shirt, pulls it further down. His knuckles brush against Peter’s skin. It’s scorching, a touch that sends an abrupt jolt through him and settles low in his belly, heavy, coiled, treacherous ―Peter melts into it, eyes fluttering closed, legs sliding on the couch and bumping against Tony’s. Their thighs press together, a line of heat through Tony’s pants, and Peter lets out a sigh.

It’s a tiny, quiet thing, and it rings in Tony’s ears like a laser blast, drowning out the sounds from the movie, muffling the sudden mad drumming of his own heart kicking hard against its cage, a caught animal.

Tony snatches his hand away like Peter’s flesh burned his.

Peter’s holding his breath, he’s a live wire. Half-panicked, half-expectant. His cheeks are aglow, flushed red.

“Mr. Stark―”

“The shirt,” Tony cuts him off, rather lamely. Rather desperately. “Too thin. You’re gonna catch a cold, kid, super arachnid immune system or not, it’s February, you need to dress better ―and _I_ need to have a word with whoever designed the air conditioning in this place, that definitely wasn’t me―”

“Mr. _Stark_ ―”

“You know what, I’ll bring you something warmer to wear, one of those adorable nerdy hoodies you got, no, they really are adorable, I’d steal them from you if I wasn’t three decades too old to pull them off, okay, let me just―”

If Tony’s life had a personal editor, these lines would have never made the cut. He’s such a mess when he _wants_.

He stumbles to his feet and away from Peter, feeling like he’ll choke on his own heartbeat. The kid’s face has clouded over, mouth tight with something like ―hurt? His hands are in his lap, clenched and white-knuckled, and he looks so _small_ there on the couch without Tony, somehow lost, suddenly unmoored, with his shoulder still bare and his sleep shorts riding up.

Tony leaves before Peter can say anything, not caring if it looks like he’s making a frantic escape. He can worry about it later, just― _later_.

He ends up spending the night in the lab, never returning for the hoodie or the rest of the movie, and he means to apologize to Peter when morning rolls around, he _does_ , but it’s easier to pretend there is no reason to.

Nothing happened. Nothing did.

 

Example 3:

Peter’s in a towel.

Peter’s in a towel and Tony stares, because he can’t not stare, before he catches himself and glues his eyes firmly to the kid’s face. Peter’s coming out of the communal showers next to the compound’s gym quarters, after a ―briefer than Tony would ever admit― sparring session that ended with Tony landing messily on his ass nine times in a row, pinned down to the mat with complete and utter effortlessness, Peter’s hands holding him down and Peter’s face, sweaty and bright, inches from his own. Bodies pressed together, the kid’s legs strong and snug around Tony’s hips.

Peter’s in a towel and his hair is wet, curling behind his ears and dripping down the back of his neck.

“Mr. Stark,” he says, a little breathless, like he wasn’t expecting Tony to still be here. Which, fair point ―Tony shouldn’t still be here.

“Hey kid,” he says, as casually as he can manage, doesn’t dwell on why he needs to consciously coach himself into sounding casual, “so, input on the water pressure?”

Peter laughs, and it makes something kick between Tony’s ribs. And, yes, he does know that _something_ has a name.

“There are _fourteen jets_ ,” Peter says, with that smile that splits his face like a sunset. “What kind of showerhead has fourteen jets?”

“Uh, these ones here?”

Peter huffs out another laugh and Tony has to keep himself from blurting out something incredibly ridiculous, like _I’ll build you a shower with fourteen hundred different fucking jets if you ask me_ , _I’ll give you whatever you tell me to if it makes you smile at me like that_.

These thoughts are how he knows this is bad. This is very, very bad, and Tony has to stop it, has to pull his shit together before he crashes headfirst into it like a drunk driver who couldn’t wait for the light to turn green, before he ends up wrecking the car, wrecking _lives_. Peter’s life.

“Is there _really_ a need for the showers to be so extra, though,” Peter’s saying, and Tony blinks. His eyes had strayed below the kid’s collarbones again, and he didn’t even notice.

It’s just that― he’s _wet_ , little droplets running down his chest and peppering an array of abs Tony doesn’t remember being _quite_ so defined, trickling down the smooth, toned expanse beneath his navel and pooling at the fabric of the towel bunched low around his waist, soaking it, turning it darker.

Tony blinks again, hurriedly looks back up at Peter’s face, and sees a deep pink flush rising up the kid’s neck, blooming all the way to his cheeks. Tony licks his lips, immediately regrets it, and it makes Peter blush harder, if that were even possible.

Someone should step in and drag Tony bodily away, right about now. Someone should.

He swallows. “What’s even the point of being a billionaire if you can’t provide extra fancy showers for your teammates, kid?”

There. _Kid_. He has to keep calling him kid, and then this will be easier.

He doesn’t know what the hell ‘this’ is.

Peter’s in a towel, but Tony’s in a sweaty black tank top that’s clinging everywhere, and it’s taken him an entirety of two minutes to realize Peter’s trying to keep his own gaze from straying, too.

It would be flattering if it didn’t make something like muted panic bubble up inside him, like a scream straining to push out. Peter’s seen _Steve_ half-naked, for fuck’s sake, he lives in a building filled with super-soldiers and secret agents that all look like something straight out of Men’s Health, and yet here Peter is, trying to hide a flustered blush every time Tony’s arms are on display, every time his shirts are on this side of too tight, every time Tony wanders out of his room still wearing the sleep sweatpants he doesn’t get much sleep in and that ride just a little too low―

Tony needs to leave.

He’s let this moment drag on far too long to be acceptable, he’s pretty sure staring at a teenager in a towel isn’t something a responsible adult does when they’re working through the How To Do Mentorship Right manual, and there’s always this small, insistent voice beating like blood behind his ears, like a spiking, crazed heartbeat, _what would someone think if they saw this, what would they say, what would May Parker think, what would Rhodey_ ―

Except, they might probably think nothing at all. Because he’s not ―he’s not _doing_ anything, is he? He never would. He’d never dare to.

He’s just casually talking to his protégé after a sparring session, which is decidedly not inappropriate, nothing to see here, please disperse. Right?

 _Yes, right_ , he thinks, and, okay, wonderful, now he’s stooped to arguing with the disappointed voice in his head ―it sometimes sounds like Pepper, sometimes like Rhodey, others like his father, rarely like his own― in the gym showers. This is going great.

“So I’m just― I gotta get my clothes? So, um―” Peter’s hands are suddenly clutching that fucking towel like a lifeline and there’s pink spreading all the way down his chest, his eyes flitting everywhere like he’s mapping the exits, landing on everything in the room that isn’t Tony. He isn’t smiling any more.

Something heavy settles low and tight inside Tony, yet another precise pang of guilt.

“Yeah,” he says, and it comes out hoarse, “yeah, you do that. Go, skedaddle. Let the senior citizens have their turn in the locker room.”

Peter snorts, not without some fondness. “You’re really not _that_ old, sir, you gotta stop saying stuff like that all the time,” he says, but he’s already moving towards the door, and he still won’t meet Tony’s eyes.

Tony only manages to let out the breath he’d been holding when he’s alone again, ends up turning the water to freezing.

 

 

 

(Tony’s had three cups of espresso, ignored approximately two dozen e-mails, texted Sam re: patrol schedules, answered Pep’s call about the upcoming SI charity gala and reassured her that yes, of course he will be making an appearance and yes, he’s okay, he has been sleeping very well and no, he hasn’t been drinking, fiddled away on his StarkPad for half an hour and eaten two point five cinnamon Danish swirls by the time Peter appears in the kitchen, bare feet making no sound as he pads his way around the island.

Peter warily eyes the breakfast arrangement before he glances up at Tony. The concerned, furrowed brow is back, now accompanied by a look of something oddly like fear. It does strange things do Tony. He wants to get up, smooth it away.

Tony… isn’t sure what he’d expected. Maybe not a dance routine around the kitchen by a cheery Peter à la deflowered protagonist of a romantic comedy, but not this guarded nervousness from the kid, either.

He clutches his coffee, takes a fortifying breath.

“Hey. Pete. Good morning,” he says ―and, _really_ now? Tony’s managed more interesting morning-after lead-ins, but the present lack of wit is probably a side effect of the sudden surge of anxiety slowly fizzing and pulling somewhere behind his lungs.

Peter has his shirtsleeves with the frayed cuffs rolled down over his knuckles and his arms wrapped around his middle, hugging himself, like he’s protecting some inner flame from dying out. His mouth, no longer kiss-swollen and shiny, is taut and serious.

He looks so _unsure_ , so uneasy, and something drops inside Tony at the sight, pools in his stomach to clench and fester.

He fucked up.

He fucked up so _bad_ this time ―is Peter scared of him now? Is he ―did Tony manage to single-handedly ruin the one good, wonderful, _sane_ thing left in his life ―did he tear all that to _shreds_ just because he couldn’t keep it in his pants ―did he take _advantage_ ―what the _fuck_ else could he possibly call what he did ―if Peter never speaks to him again, God, if Peter _leaves_ ―

“…good morning,” Peter says, all quiet, tentative adolescence. His gaze flits back to the assortment of toast and cookies and croissants laid out in front of him, and he shifts his weight, rocking back and forth on his feet. “You, uh. You really didn’t have to get all this, Mr. Stark.”

There’s a bruise across the slant of his collarbone, already yellowed. His hair is a mess, candy-flossed. Tony remembers pulling at it, hard, the _sounds_ that drew out of Peter, those high, keening things Tony smothered with his mouth.

He gasps out something like a cough, realizes he’s been gripping the porcelain mug so tightly his hands have gone numb around it. His heart sputters, kicks. “ _Kid_ ―”

Peter’s arms are unfolding, stretching out towards Tony as he takes a hurried step forward, “God, Mr. Stark―what―”

Tony hears the clatter of the kitchen stool toppling over as he scrambles to his feet, and there’s a loud ringing in his ears and a violent tremor rippling down his left arm and he’s suddenly so cold everywhere and he can’t breathe, he can’t fucking _breathe_ ―

“Mr. Stark―Tony―”

His brain doesn’t quite register how it happens but he blinks and he’s on the floor, knees crushing harshly into polished hardwood and the image of Peter laid out on his bed flickering in his mind’s eye like a light bulb about to blow up.

He frantically grabs at his own wrist and he’s straightening, a little, his breaths coming out scratchy, croaking things like someone tore them from him, and Peter’s there, kneeling right beside him on the floor, eyes like dinner plates, two hands gripping Tony’s shoulders and not letting go.

“Tony,” he’s saying through a fog, “I’m right here, just breathe, that’s it, in and out, you’re doing great, Tony, breathe―”

That voice, steady and sure, reaching Tony as if from the bottom of a well, resonating.

Tony tries to focus on it, center his mind around it. Pushes against that immovable weight that’s settled on his chest and crushed his windpipe, tries to breathe, anchors himself in this moment, the kitchen floor and Peter’s hands and Peter’s eyes and Peter’s words, Peter’s lips as they move, Peter’s fingers pressed against Tony, searing, heavy, firm, _there_.

“Tony,” Peter says again, massaging Tony’s shoulders, slow and strong. The feel of thin, sweaty cotton riling up and moving between Peter’s palms and Tony’s flesh is strangely comforting, sedative. “Tony, it’s fine, you’re fine. It’s okay. Breathe.”

 _Breathe_.

Tony does.)

 

 

 

Peter’s birthday comes quietly, without much fuss.

It’s a Wednesday. He sends Tony a picture of himself in a blue, glittery, crinkled party hat, a chaotic array of birthday streamers in the background and a tall, slightly slanted cake in prominent display on the table in front of him.

A set of number candles are already blown: a striped white one and a lime green eight, half-melted, crooked, in the middle of the frame.

Eighteen, bright and colorful.

Peter is bracketed by his aunt on one side, her arm wrapped around him and her face beaming, proud, two friends on the other. Tony recognizes the boy who hacked into KAREN’s systems three years ago like it was nothing, he might start considering yet another internship here, truly, and the girl who, according to Peter, is ‘ _honestly kinda like Ms. Potts, sir, I mean, a little’_ , somehow both terrifying and sweet, he said, and on the whole utterly unimpressed by all the insanity casually happening around her.

Both kids are turned towards him, their body language affectionate, protective, and Peter seems to glow in their proximity, a lit-up planet and its moons. His grin in the photo is wide, happy, infectious. Tony feels his own mouth tug into a small smile he can’t fight just by looking at it.

 _Welcome to the fabulous world of adulthood_ , _Mr. Parker_ , Tony texts in reply. He stares at the unsent message for a drawn-out, stunned whole of thirty seconds before hastily deleting it, because―

Because, no. Absolutely not. There are too many things Peter might read into that, things Tony has been trying very, very hard not to acknowledge.

 _Happy birthday, spiderling!!_ is what he writes instead, accompanied by a balloon and a spider emoji.

Which is very appropriate.

Entirely uninspired, no doubt, and not exactly conducive to conversation, but definitely above board.

 _thanks mr stark!!!_ Peter replies almost immediately, and Tony maybe chokes a little when he sees the three pink hearts snugly attached next to the exclamation points.

And, only a few heartbeats later, four more messages in rapid succession:

_it’s spider MAN btw_

_don’t buy me sth too fancy like a car etc please, may will freak out_

_i know you would and you were going to_

_you dont have to get me anything you know that right_

No, Tony certainly does not know that.

Steve, Barnes, and even T’Challa and Shuri have each already sent Peter cards and tastefully hand-wrapped presents from Wakanda addressed to the compound, which Tony has carefully arranged in Peter’s bedroom for him to find, unopened. Nat, smiling more softly than Tony’s seen her do in years, showed him the spider-shaped silver brooch ―he’s sure there’s at least one blade concealed there somehow― she plans to give the kid, one that’s belonged to her since before SHIELD, she said. Bruce got him books, rare first editions on bio-chem research, and Clint will probably mail something too, a practical, thoughtful gift that more likely than not will have Laura’s touch. Sam will take him to a baseball game, and Lang to a concert. And Thor, well― Thor’s already announced his intentions to host the grandest feast New Asgard has ever seen in celebration of the Man of Spiders’ eighteen years.

 _I could always get you a private jet_ , he texts, remembering a giant bunny towering in his living room in Malibu, the tight line of Pepper’s mouth, her indignation palpable in the air.

_Joking, kid, just joking_

_Unless you want a private jet, in which case I’m definitely not joking_

_I’ll give you whatever you want_

There’s radio silence from Peter’s end for the entirety of two hours after that, during which Tony paces and fidgets and vehemently denies it when FRIDAY, in a somewhat careful tone, points out that he’s pacing and fidgeting.

It takes a certain effort, not to let that newly familiar cocktail of dread and anticipation creep up inside him at the thought of what Peter could answer to _that_.

Tony can’t let himself admit that a part of him, small and stupid and utterly self-destructive, did it on purpose, left an invitation dangling in the air, like ripe fruit ready to fall from the tree, offered by the goddamned snake. If he thinks long and hard on it, he’ll be ruined. He’s pretty sure his more impulsive actions and his resolute denial to face the consequences of those actions probably cancel each other out through some law of backwards psychology that wasn’t taught while Tony was still in school.

 _You know what I want_ , Peter might say, _so give me I want_ , _Mr. Stark_ , and the other shoe will finally drop with a resounding thud.

Tony doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself if that happens.

When the kid’s reply does come, Tony nearly drops the blaster he’d been tinkering with, shuts the music he’d put on to distract himself and smears grease all over his phone as he blindly grabs for it.

_i just want to hang out mr stark, may’s working tonight anyway_

_you’ll be home right?_

Tony’s first thought is, _oh_. Home. It’s the same place for both of them, now, it has been for months.

His second thought is, _he didn’t_. Peter… didn’t.

Tony should be relieved. He _is_ relieved. This is a good thing. Great, actually ―it means Tony doesn’t have to panic while waiting for Peter to show up, won’t have to practice two dozen alternatives of a long, heartfelt monologue on why this thing between them shouldn’t and can’t happen, won’t have to sit around trying not to take refuge in the mini-bar and stewing in his guilt because he’d know said speech wouldn’t really work, anyway.

Then again, ‘hang out’ does mean a different thing now from when Tony was a teenager, a whole lifetime ago, so. Maybe he hasn’t dodged that bullet he himself fired yet.

When Peter arrives to the compound he’s bouncy, in high spirits, a lilt in his step as he drops his backpack and walks up to Tony, smiling that rosy smile.

Tony can’t help it ―he gives the kid a grin of his own, returns the hug when Peter flings himself into Tony’s arms with a cheerful “Hey, Mr. Stark,” squeezes the kid’s shoulder for perhaps a beat longer than strictly necessary when they part. He does this, Peter, he walks into a room and makes it brighter, bigger, a place Tony wants to be in.

“There’s the birthday boy,” Tony says, and, because he’s a masochist, really, “what, was there no wild party? No underage drinking and puking and making out and questionable music till the break of dawn? I don’t want to be the kind of old guy that says ‘you kids today’, but you know what, I’ll go there, you kids today are boring.”

Peter arches a playful eyebrow and steps away from Tony, breaking the flimsy remnants of the hug, Tony’s hand falling from its perch on his shoulder.

“You told me once that your partying years are a very bad, no good example that I absolutely shouldn’t follow, Mr. Stark,” he says pointedly, and, well, okay, he makes a strong case. That aspect of Tony’s history strays too far from the path he wants to see Peter on. “Besides, I meant what I said. I’d really rather hang out with you. If you want.”

There are too many things wrong with that sentence, all of them beginning and ending with the fact that Peter’s standing here, all of eighteen to Tony’s almost fifty, and he’s being so impulsively _honest_ about it, about wanting to be around him, close to him, with him―

 _You should hang out with your friends, kid, that’s the healthy thing to do_ , Tony means to say.

What comes out instead is, “I haven’t planned anything, kid, I’m all yours,” which is true in more ways than one, ways Tony isn’t about to confront right now.

He’s going it to let it hang there, fill their already full air just a little more, because this is what Tony does.

Peter’s grin widens, at that, and Tony can’t quite remember the last time someone who knew Tony to the bone, all the messiness and shadows and edges, was so genuinely excited to spend time with him.

“We can just sit, you know, watch TV, if you like,” Peter offers, smile faltering the barest bit, something hesitant suddenly flickering in his eyes. “Or we could go to the lab, whatever you want, sir―”

“It’s _your_ day, Pete,” Tony cuts him off, hurried, before he starts feeling something he categorically should not be feeling in response to ‘whatever you want, sir’ coming from Peter’s mouth. “If you want to watch TV, we’ll watch TV, kid, and I’ll make you the best popcorn you’ve ever had in your life. So what was that show you told me you were binging? Sabrina the Teenage Witch? Am I saying that right?”

Peter gives him a patented eye roll.

“Yeah, that would be the 90’s title, Mr. Stark,” he says, and Tony’s mind betrays him once more, derailing, snide ― _oh, right, the 90’s, which you did not experience because you hadn’t been born yet, isn’t that right, kid_. “It’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, now.”

“Much catchier,” Tony says agreeably, “very modern,” and Peter’s chuckle curls up between his lungs, his bones, settles, makes him want to never stop hearing it.

And, later, sitting in front of the screen with an armful of Peter and pretending to watch something he doesn’t have the presence of mind to pay even the slightest bit of attention to―

“This is nice,” Peter says, a contented whisper, his hair brushing Tony’s jaw as he snuggles close.

Tony stills, not daring to move a single muscle. But he doesn’t pull away, not this time.

“Yeah,” he mutters, “this is nice, kid,” and wonders, not for the first time, who the hell is flying this plane, if there even was a pilot in the first place.

 

 

 

(Tony’s had better mornings.

“Jesus,” he says, and it sounds like he’s swallowed sandpaper. He splashes water over his face in the sink, blinks rapidly through the coldness of it. “Jesus _fuck_. I― sorry about that, kid.”

Peter’s face hardens, even through the cloud of concern that’s descended on it.

“Can you not _do_ that?” he says, high-pitched and frustrated. “Can you just ―stop _apologizing_ to me all the time? You just had a panic attack and you’re―you’re―” He trails off, breathes out, measured and concentrated like those neat self-help books that tell you to let go of negative emotions always preach. “Are you okay?”

Tony’s pulse hasn’t fully evened out, his shirt is clinging to his body with the chill of sweat.

“Peachy,” he croaks, tries a smile. It only makes Peter wince. “No, Peter, really. I’m fine. All good. Nothing that hasn’t happened before. This is normal,” he says, as earnest as he can manage, as if they didn’t leave normal somewhere fifty miles back, tangled in Tony’s sheets. “Don’t worry about me, kid.”

Which is, apparently, the wrong thing to say. All of it, everything that just came out of his mouth.

A momentary spark of something very close to anger flashes across Peter’s eyes, battling it out with the worry for Tony’s general wellbeing ―that unsure kind of helplessness is gone, however, Peter doesn’t look so guarded and nervous any more, and Tony allows himself to count that as a fragile win.

“You can’t… you don’t _seriously_ expect me not to _worry_ about you,” Peter says, the slightest hint of a tremor in his voice. Tony feels it like a punch to the gut. “Not after everything, and― and _especially_ not after last night. And I’m not a _kid_ , stop calling me _kid_. And I know you didn’t want this, alright, us, together, I _know_ that, and that you regret it and you didn’t even want to _look_ at me today but―”

“What,” Tony says, because, honestly, _what_?

A shuddering inhale. “Last night,” Peter says, drawing the words out, poignant. “When you ―when _we_. I just, I know you feel shitty about it and I don’t know what to do to make you not feel shitty about it. And I woke up and you weren’t there and I. If you didn’t want it, you could’ve said so, Mr. Stark. Because I can’t ―how do you expect me to just move from you on now?”

Tony shivers because sweat is still cooling down on his skin and not because of Peter’s eyes on him. Definitely not Peter’s eyes.

“What,” he says again, a scratchy breath. “Kid― _Peter_. You think I don’t _want_ you.”

Peter sniffs. He looks pained. “What I think is you almost had a heart attack just by looking at me the morning after we― after having sex. And I’m not sure if I did something wrong but, like I said. You could’ve said no. Because you _know_. You know I’m in love with you, and you could’ve turned me down if you didn’t want― me. If you don’t want to be with me.”

Tony stills, brain caught somewhere between Peter’s words and the white hot noise inside his skull.

He stares at Peter staring at him.

He’d been so dramatically caught up in a whirlwind of anguished guilt over how Peter might’ve regretted this, how the kid might’ve figured out harboring a harmless teenage crush wasn’t quite the same as getting fucked by your mentor and childhood hero, how he might feel betrayed, taken advantage of, used ―that he didn’t stop to think that Peter looked so goddamned _scared_ because he believed Tony wouldn’t want to do this again, wouldn’t still want _him_.

So, Tony did fuck up, as he’s wont to do, but in a quite different way than initially estimated.

 _You know I’m in love with you_ , Peter said, _how do you expect me to just move on from you_ , and something horrified and hopeful rushes through Tony like liquid fire, coils hot in every corner of him.

Peter’s still standing there, shoulders straight like he’s trying to make a point, a myriad of emotions chasing each other across his face.

The sunlight’s hitting him from all angles and it’d be easy for him to look very small like this, drowned in gold, dwarfed by heartache, but he’s holding his ground, meeting Tony’s gaze, not taking his words back. Peter’s always been too fucking brave for his own good. For anyone’s good.

For a moment, suspended and desperate like a skipped heartbeat, all Tony can hear is Peter saying his name ―first a sigh, then a moan, then a cry bitten against Tony’s skin. And he knows he shouldn’t.

He _shouldn’t_.

“You’re not in love with me,” Tony says, “you’re just very― eighteen.”

And just like that, something breaks. Peter takes a step forward, and another, hands clenched. “No,” he says, slow and harsh, “ _no_. You don’t get to do that, I’m not a child. I know what I feel. I love you. I _have_ loved you, for years, and you know it, you _do_.”

Peter’s words are always coated in clear, stinging, burning sincerity. He means every single thing that comes out of his mouth, he pours his heart out on Tony’s kitchen floor without a single care for the mess it’ll make.

“I know what I _feel_ ,” Peter says, desperate as a deluge, eyes big and wet.

Tony sighs. It’s a shuddered, shaky thing. _This won’t work_ , he needs to say, but he’s said it before. _This can’t happen_ , he needs to say, but it already has.

He doesn’t know what will be worse, for either of them; turn Peter away now that he’s had him, now that he’s heard this, carry on and try to pretend it was nothing, or jump onto that speeding train and try to enjoy the ride until it all inevitably crashes―

“Look,” he says, the weight of Peter’s gaze suddenly this side of too much, “look, there are ―technicalities, here. Even if we manage to ignore everything else, which is a lot of stuff to sweep under the rug, mind you, there’s still the future, Pete. If I somehow manage to die of old age, which is not exactly a high probability, here, even if that _happens_ , and you’re st…ubborn enough to stick with me till then, you’ll still―”

“You were gonna say stupid, right?” Peter cuts him off, moving neatly into Tony’s space. He looks just like when he’s about to put on his mask and jump off a building, high on adrenaline and righteousness, like there is nothing in the world that can possibly daunt him. “You think sticking with you makes me stupid? I don’t care about what’ll happen one, five, twenty years from now, Mr. Stark. I care about you _now_. About what I feel for you.”

Steeling himself, Peter reaches out and takes one of Tony’s hands between his. Tony lets him, doesn’t have the strength not to. Doesn’t have the will.

“This won’t end well,” he says _. Should’ve thought of that before you dragged him in your bed, Tony. Should’ve thought of a lot of things_.

Peter’s so close now, if he leaned just a little forward, their foreheads could touch. “It will,” he says, serious and intense and so, so young. “It can. _Tony_.”

Tony wants to pull him in, crush him in his arms, keep him there. He wants to tell him that he’s effectively managed to wreck Tony with one single word, he wants to tell him so many things.

“Peter―”

“Do you?” Peter says, soul laid bare, and his hands won’t let go, cautious strength, always moderated, curled over Tony’s. “Do you love _me_? Because I can’t― I need to know. It’s okay if you don’t, but I _have_ to know.”

There are a thousand words sticking under Tony’s tongue, filling up the empty spaces, shaking him from the inside ― _how could I not, how could you possibly think I don’t, how can I_ ―

“Yes,” he says, low, because he’s too tired for lies, too exhausted for subterfuge, he wants to stop running away. “I do, I love you,” and the look on Peter’s face will be burned across his eyelids for as long as Tony has left to live.

The kid will ruin him. He just hopes that happens before Tony ends up ruining him first.

“Oh,” Peter breathes, and smiles. It’s small, surprised. Happy. Tony never wants to see it slide off his face. “ _Oh_.”

Tony gives a weak, quivering laugh. “I thought you were smart. I was under the impression that fighting a genocidal galactic overlord and restoring half the universe just to bring you back to me would’ve tipped you off on how I feel. So.” His thumb strokes over Peter’s knuckles. He swallows. “What do we do now, sweetheart?”

Peter rises on his toes, but instead of the kiss Tony expects, his lips land softly, affectionately, on Tony’s cheek.

“What I think we should do,” he says, and from someone else it might’ve been coy, “is go back to bed. It’s still early, I got nowhere else to be.”

“But I got you breakfast.” Tony sweeps his free hand around, where the decidedly over-the-top, guilt-induced arrangement of choices is still ostentatiously stacked on every granite countertop. “You’re going to skip the most important meal of the day? You know you’re technically still growing, right?”

“Later,” Peter says, impatient, tugging, and Tony caves. “We got time.”)

 

 

 

Things don’t turn out to be easy, because it wouldn’t be Tony’s life if they did.

After Peter’s eighteenth birthday comes and goes, easy and quiet and uneventful, with Peter’s newfound adulthood come actual, concrete flirting efforts.

A part of Tony is terrified. The other part, greedy, traitorous, shoved forcefully in the back but gaining more ground by the day, is positively thrilled. And Tony―

Tony has to beat that part away with a pipe wrench.

He’s not allowed ―he can’t let himself _want_ things like that.

Peter’s misplaced adoration, it had been there from day one. A standard case of hero worship, Tony had told himself, brushed it off easily enough. Maybe a bit of a crush, okay, just as well. Peter would get over it. Growing up ―combined with lengthy exposure to the real Tony Stark and his many unattractive qualities secreted away under the flashy façade― would do the trick.

It’d been nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Peter didn’t get over it. The awkwardness faded, somewhat, yet the reverent stares became wistful, furtive glances quickly averted, little touches became lengthy embraces Tony couldn’t not return, and after Thanos, it all became _more_. Something deeper, truer. Something almost frightening, that surged up and gripped both of them by the goddamn throat.

A minor consolation: the kid had never tried to do anything about it.

Not until _now_.

Peter Parker, officially an adult and full-time Avenger and suddenly striding across lines they have cautiously, nonverbally agreed to skirt.

It’s clumsy, because Peter’s eighteen and what he knows of seduction he’s likely picked up from movies and Buzzfeed articles and bad porn. There is the standard series of juvenile clichés, naturally, and it should make Tony laugh but he ends up _looking_ instead, horribly, ridiculously enraptured; Peter starts wearing tighter clothes, muscles outlined and collarbones peeking from under taut fabric while he idly sits behind his laptop and sneaks Tony quick looks from above the screen; he drops things and bends over to pick them up excruciatingly slow, hips jutting out, waist disproportionally bent; he makes sure to brush his fingers against Tony’s when he walks over to hand him a screwdriver in the lab; he bites his lip and he ruffles his hair and he flutters his eyelashes and it’s so, _so_ ―

It’s not as if Tony was uninterested, before. He’s been trying so fucking hard not to do it, he’s been trying for so long.

He thinks about Peter almost constantly. It feels as if there was a shut door in front of him and now it has been pried open, just an inch. Tony has to keep himself from crossing that threshold. Tony needs to stay in his lane, follow the rules.

Well. He’s never been any good at that.

Days become weeks become months and Tony, somewhere along the way, stops pretending that the face he sees when he closes his eyes and wraps a hand around his cock isn’t Peter’s, that the twisted thing fluttering low in his belly every time he looks at him isn’t pure, reckless longing.

Tony’s bone-tired, and it’s not going away, and lying to himself is _draining_.

Peter flirts and keeps flirting, sometimes bold, sometimes endearingly shy, and Tony doesn’t turn him away. Doesn’t shut it down. Tony returns Peter’s arch smiles, slings an arm lazily over his shoulders, rests a hand on the small of his back, traces the lines of his body slow and heavy when measuring him for a new suit ―all the while telling himself that it’s fine if that’s all there is.

It’s okay if he only thinks it, only wants it.

But Peter doesn’t relent, and Tony allows it to keep happening, doesn’t rein in his own touches and looks and innuendos ―Tony’s always known he’ll end up killing himself, one way or another, literally or metaphorically― and, inescapably, it all comes to a screeching standstill.

“What are you doing?” Peter asks him one afternoon, sudden and sharp.

Tony looks up, startled. Peter’s face is torn with frustration.

“What am I doing,” he says carefully, because he doesn’t know what version of wrong this is anymore. He’s just slinked away from Peter after running a finger lightly down his spine, bent over him next to a worktable, watched him turn a bright, wild shade of red.

Peter levels him with a fixed look, tilts an inch forward like he wanted to close the space between them but reconsidered, it’s almost a step.

This is what their moments have been, a fractured series of almosts.

“You’re really gonna keep flirting with me if you don’t actually want to do anything about it, Mr. Stark?” Peter says in a rushed exhale. He looks… unafraid, resolute. Tony forgets, sometimes, that this is the kid who used to fight armed criminals in his pajamas, who followed Tony into space, who rushes headfirst into battle without a second thought and flings himself off rooftops without bothering to check the height of the jump first.

And Tony, he doesn’t have enough strength to deny it, he doesn’t even have enough left to feel as bad as he knows he ought to.

Maybe he should just go. Somewhere, anywhere, preferably an entire continent away from the kid ―only Peter wouldn’t let him, and Tony knows he wouldn’t last long before running back to him, anyway. He’s just that pathetic where Peter is concerned.

He considers vocalizing protests about _inappropriate_ and _father figure_ and _barely legal_. He considers a lot of things, most prominent among them the logistics and practicality of digging a hole in concrete and burying himself in it.

He runs a hand over his face. “It’s not a matter of what I want,” is what he says, resigned, a man facing a firing squad.

“It _is_ ,” Peter says, a little desperate. “If you _want_ me―”

“Don’t,” Tony cuts him off, one of these days he’ll end up in a heap on the floor from the sheer stress, “just― don’t, kid. Let’s not go there. Please, let’s just not.”

But Peter’s moving closer, stops when there’s only a few tense, electric inches separating them before Tony can shift gears and step away.              

“ _Why_ not?” Peter says, eyes flickering between Tony’s. “If this is just about you being older―”

Tony laughs, he can’t help it. It’s an ugly, humorless thing, torn from somewhere deep and bad within him. “Yeah, kid, this is _just_ about that. Nothing else wrong with all this, nope, just a bit of healthy concern over a tiny age difference―”

“I’m glad,” Peter says, biting, bitter, “that you can be all sarcastic about this, Mr. Stark, about all the mixed signals, about leading me on only to just… backpedal the last minute, every _single_ time ―give the guy a medal, somebody.”

Tony blinks, stunned.

It registers, in the pressing, cloying silence that follows, that this is quite possibly the first time in many long years Tony is well and truly out of words, can’t come up with anything to say.

His heartbeat’s picked up, he can feel it drumming hard and frightened all the way from his chest and clawing up his windpipe.

Peter lets out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “But I ―am I reading this wrong? It’s been _ages_ , and I know what I’m seeing and ―you like me. You _like_ me, right?”

Tony winces. He’s lost track of the script, can’t tell if this is a tragedy or a really, really bad comedy that should have never made it past the editing room.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, voice faltering. In a way, he’s just as obvious as Peter is.

“It’s all that matters, Mr. Stark.” Peter cants his head, eyes cutting into Tony’s, and, as always, Tony finds himself stepping forward where he should be stepping back. It’s like he’s wearing an invisible leash and Peter’s tugging. “Why can’t we just―”

“Kid―”  
  
“Why can’t we just _try_ ,” Peter says, and then he’s reaching up, all passionate, teenage single-mindedness, and pressing his lips firmly against Tony’s.

A good chunk of Tony’s brain shuts down.

Peter peppers his mouth with a series of small, impatient kisses, wet, inelegant, rushed little things, and a strangled sound gets caught in Tony’s throat, he starts kissing back before he’s fully realized what’s he’s doing, mind numb with want.

He cups the back of Peter’s head with one hand and pulls him closer by the waist with the other, coaxes Peter’s mouth open, tangles shaking fingers in his hair.

Peter moans, goes limp, melting gratefully into his arms. He trembles against Tony as he parts his lips to let Tony’s tongue inside, his hands clutch at Tony’s shirt so desperately the fabric might tear, come apart between them, and it’ll be some grand metaphor for something Tony doesn’t want to care about, not now. He digs his fingers harshly into Peter’s hip, his other hand wrenching away from Peter’s hair to flatten against his back, draw him closer, press him hard against Tony’s front, every inch of air between them suddenly unbearable.

A full-body shudder rips through Peter, his arms fly around Tony’s neck like a death trap. Tony kisses him, keeps kissing him, deep and starved and selfish, doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to stop. He’s already hard, every cell in his body alight, crazed, screaming for Peter.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter huffs against Tony’s lips, voice shot with need. “Mr. Stark―”

His hand trails from Peter’s hip to his ass, squeezing, urging him on as Peter groans and bucks against Tony’s crotch ―he can feel Peter’s stiff length against his own, hot and heavy through their pants, and pleasure coils white hot in the base of his spine. Peter’s hands, frenzied, run up Tony’s back, Tony's arms, landing on any place he can reach like he can’t get enough, like they’re running out of time.

Peter moans again, high and blissful, shivers as he starts rubbing himself against Tony, a point of fire everywhere their bodies touch. Tony’s dizzy with it, all parts of him exposed and raw, heart kicking madly.

“Peter,” he pants, ruined, muffled into Peter’s pliant mouth, “baby, wait―”

“Don’t wanna wait,” Peter whimpers, catching Tony’s lower lip between his teeth. Their breaths come out harsh, fractured, mingling together. Peter nudges Tony’s nose with his own, moves his hips meaningfully against Tony’s, his fingers start fumbling with the buttons of Tony’s shirt.

Tony grunts, has to recruit every last shred of self-restraint he’s got left to keep himself from pulling Peter down on his cock, from _holding_ him there.

“Okay,” he rasps, taking Peter’s hands between his own to still them, trying to think through the thick cloud of desperate, heady arousal, “okay, just― slow your roll, let’s take a minute, Peter, hold on, just a minute―”

Peter pulls back, jaw slack, eyes swimming. “Mr. Stark―”

“We need.” Tony splays a hand over Peter’s middle to ward him off, struggling not to move, not to crush his body into Peter’s like he wants, he’s aching for it but he _can’t_ ― “We need to talk about this first.”

“Or not,” Peter whispers, tipping his head, mouth chasing Tony’s again.

Tony groans into it, grabs him by the shoulders and walks him backwards until Peter hits against a worktable, the low thud and his surprised little yelp reverberating, pinching straight through Tony’s brain.

Something clatters to the floor.

He licks into Peter’s lips with reckless abandon, fucking his mouth with his tongue, rolling his hips against Peter’s welcoming heat. Peter arches his back into it, takes it ―Tony slips his hands under Peter’s thighs, lifts his legs and pushes until Peter’s clambering onto the table, hurried and awkward, those tiny, high-pitched moans rattling in his chest.

Peter keens and twitches and tries to meet every slide of Tony’s tongue against his, winds a hand through Tony’s hair and pulls, hard, fervid. His hips stutter against every tiny shift, his legs come up to wrap around Tony, the heel of a scuffed sneaker digging roughly into the small of Tony’s back.

“I’m― Mr. Stark― _please_ ―” He grinds down and his cock nudges against Tony’s, impossible to ignore. Tony breaks the kiss and slides his mouth across Peter’s jaw line, bites at his earlobe, relishing in the surprised, ecstatic gasp that draws from Peter. “Please―”

“Yes,” Tony breathes, has no idea what it is he’s agreeing to, has no idea what Peter’s begging for, only that he’s going to give it to him, whatever he asks. Anything he wants. Tony thrusts up against him, shoves him further across the table, and the sound Peter makes is _wrecked_.

He holds him close with one arm curled tightly around his back and kisses his way to Peter’s neck, mouthing frantically at it as he keeps moving against Peter in a desperate, uncoordinated mess of a rhythm, too far gone to care, too wrapped up in Peter’s skin, Peter’s smell, the taste of him sweet and rich and intoxicating, roiling inside Tony like a thunderstorm.

“G-God,” Peter gasps, quivering under him, legs going weak where they’re resting precariously around Tony’s waist. “Don’t― don’t stop, Mr. Stark, don’t―”

Tony hums into Peter’s skin, tongue lapping at the burning column of his throat, teeth nipping at his pulse point. He angles himself so that his cock rubs against Peter’s through the layers of fabric with every choppy thrust, and Peter throws his head back, his grip on Tony’s hair tightening, painful and perfect.

“I’m― I can’t, I’m gonna―”

“It’s okay,” Tony says, hoarse, keeps biting and licking at the sweaty, paper-thin skin under Peter’s jaw. “It’s okay, Peter, come on―”

 _What am I doing_ , he manages to think between sloppy, frantic thrusts, _what the fuck am I doing_.

“S-sorry, God, I can’t―” Peter’s voice is strangled, plaintive, his breath coming in short, punched-out hitches.

Tony glides a hand under Peter’s shirt, rubs a palm up his back, a wonderful plane of muscles and warmth while they keep rocking messily into each other. The noises Peter makes are the hottest things he’s heard, and Tony brings his other hand on Peter’s ass, something nearly violent in his grip as he squeezes, harsh and possessive.

“Mr. _Stark_ ―”

“Come on,” Tony growls, “come on, Peter, that’s it, you’re so good―”

“Oh _fuck_ ―” Peter’s entire body is shaking like a leaf in Tony’s arms, supple and small. “Mr. Stark, I― tell me―”

“So fucking good,” Tony mumbles into his skin, speeding up his thrusts, hands clenching where he’s grabbing Peter. His nerve-endings are on fire, his chest tight, his cock aching. “You’re so good, Peter, so good, you’re perfect―”

Peter falls apart under him, grasping blindly at Tony’s hair as he comes with tiny, winded noises, body wracked head to toe with violent tremors.

“Yeah,” Tony rasps, holding him through it, kissing the corner of his mouth, his temple, the rise of his cheekbone as Peter gasps and shudders for what feels like forever. “Yeah, that’s it, baby, you’re perfect, _that’s it_ ―”

A small, choked moan rips from Peter’s throat like a sob.

Tony slows down, his lower body stuttering to a reluctant halt as Peter’s breathing gradually evens out and his hand tentatively unclenches from Tony’s hair. Peter’s head lolls against the crook of his neck, a little sigh evaporates into Tony’s overheated skin.

It takes Tony several long, unfocused seconds to realize the heavy panting that’s filling the room like a slew of suppressed gunshots is coming from him.

Peter nuzzles his face into Tony’s shoulder, his cheek rubbing into the crumpled fabric. “That,” he says, voice small, tired, “was really good.”

Tony swallows, slowly withdraws his hand from under Peter’s shirt and starts stroking soothing circles up and down Peter’s clothed back, traces the bumps and ridges of his spine. “Are you okay?” he asks, and even to his own ears it sounds strained.

He’s still painfully, sickeningly hard, his vision blurry at the edges, and it’s all crashing down on him in tidal waves, suffocating and huge and unrelenting, what he just let happen. What he just _did_.

“Mmmh.” Peter stirs, a small pout cracking across his lips as Tony moves to disentangle himself. Lifting his hands from Peter’s body is like trying to work open a pair of handcuffs, and Peter’s eyes flit down to Tony’s crotch. “You didn’t―”

“It’s fine,” Tony says, harried. “Don’t worry about that.”

He’s already wedged away, even if it’s glaringly, ludicrously after the fact for that now. He puts space between their bodies and glues his hands, clenched and white-knuckled, firmly to his sides as if that could retroactively erase those hazy, thoughtless minutes, like upholding a pointed sense of modesty now might somehow fix things, or make them mean less.

 _If you don’t let the kid get you off then it’s not like_ that _, right?_ _Tony Stark, ladies and gentlemen_.

Peter’s body arches forward, like a magnet pulled by Tony’s true north. “But you’re still―"

“It’s _fine_ ,” Tony says again, now stumbling away in earnest. It’s not fine, none of this is, it hasn’t been, ever. Peter’s laid out on the table in a haphazard heap, wild-haired and flushed, and Tony’s sure he’s going to fall to his knees and stay there in the space between his next two breaths.

Peter clears his throat, suddenly bashful, a hand nervously smoothing down the front of his clothes.

“So, I―” he swallows, and as he gingerly lowers himself from the table a flash of discomfort twists his features. Ruined underwear, not very nice. “So that means you do like me, then?” he blurts out, and Tony sometimes just feels _old_. He wants to burst out in laughter, or maybe cry. Either would be appropriately hysterical and melodramatic, a window to all the things tumbling and swelling inside him.

“I already established that what I feel doesn’t quite matter here, I’m pretty sure I did that,” Tony says, raking a hand through his hair. It’s matted, disheveled, and he wants Peter to pull at it again.

He wants to make Peter let out those perfect sounds once more, he wants to take him to bed, he wants to do so goddamn _much_ to him he could fill a book, a lengthy, sordid, incriminating manuscript that no one would ever dare publish.

“And _I_ established that it’s the only thing that matters to me, I’m pretty sure I did that,” Peter fires back, but there’s no real sting in it. Tony’s gaze falls to his neck, where the skin is pink and raw from Tony’s teeth and the scratch of Tony’s beard. “I meant what I said, Mr. Stark.”

And there’s that tone again, small and soft and hopeful ―it rips through Tony like a hot poker, like the shard that once threatened to lodge with final precision into his heart, it guts him open.

He wonders if Peter knows what he does to him when he talks like that, doubts it.

Tony takes another step back, afraid he might do something terrible, like walk up to Peter and kiss him again. He might never let him go then. He might rip him to pieces, just like he’s done to nearly every single good thing that’s ever fallen into his life.

Tony _needs_ , he can’t shy away from that glaring truth any longer, he needs Peter so much that it hurts to keep still, but he owes it to the kid to be strong enough to stay away.

It isn’t something he’s had much practice with; Tony’s lived a lifetime of always getting what he desired, his sex drive is downright _spoiled_ and utterly devoid of conscience, and Peter―

Peter’s not making it easy.

“I’ve known you for three years, and all this time, I never thought I’d get the chance to see you so _silent_ , Mr. Stark,” he says. He’s trying for a teasing lilt, something light and unaffected, but his voice catches a little on the last word, quivering. Well, he and Tony have that in common, too. “So, again ―why don’t we just _try_?”

 _Can’t happen_ , Tony’s mind screeches, a broken record, _can’t happen_ , _can’t happen_.

“It’s a bad idea,” he says. His hindbrain provides, unhelpfully, that this isn’t a refusal, but a flimsy, perfunctory thing Peter can smash his way through if he just tries hard enough. “Look, kid, it’s―”

“Why can’t you let _me_ decide that,” Peter presses on, cheeks still flushed, and it simply isn’t fair that someone can look so debauched and horribly innocent at the same time. “If it’s about the others ―I won’t tell anyone, Mr. Stark, I don’t need you to ―to keep me on your arm or whatever, I just want _you_ ―”

“Kid, the fact that you _know_ this has to stay a secret, otherwise very bad, no good things will happen to both of us, that fact? Is reasons one to thousand why this is a _horrible idea_ ―”

“A _horrible idea_ is to be with someone you don’t want, who doesn’t _get_ you―”

“Oh, is this our issue, then? I’m sure there’s a number of age-appropriate superheroes out there in the world, waiting for you, if your problem with dating other eighteen year-olds is that you can’t _relate_ ―”

“My problem is that you’re in _denial,_ less than two minutes after being all over me on that table―”

Tony flinches at that like Peter’s physically hit him. He stops, swallows. “That,” he starts, wavers, tries again. “Fuck. I know. That was ―I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Peter all but shouts. He seems just about ready to throw his arms up in despair. “I want you to do it again. And _you_ want to do it again. Don’t you?”

He does.

Tony _does_.

He stares at a spot somewhere to Peter’s left. “Yes,” he hears himself say.

“Yes?”

He nods jerkily. “Yes. Okay. Let’s… let’s try. We can give it a try.”

Peter comes over to him, wraps his arms around Tony’s torso. Holds on with such obvious relief, smiles a small smile into the crook of Tony’s neck.

 

 

 

(Tony doesn’t know what Peter thinks he’s getting out of this.  
  
This ―thing. This relationship. _Them_.

He worries about the kid. He knows, with disconcerting, stinging clarity, that there might come a day when Peter will start, sit up, wonder if he truly wants this, realize that there are other options for him, better, infinitely healthier relationships to be had, people who can love him like he deserves to be loved, without all the mess of Tony’s splintered, guilty adoration and his general fuckedupness ―a day when Peter will, in short, outgrow this.

Tony both dreads and looks forward to it. He’s pretty sure that if Peter comes to his senses and decides to walk away, Tony will be shipwrecked, torn to pieces, but it won’t matter as long as Peter’s happy.

He very, very badly wants Peter to be happy.

And right now, in bed, with half his clothes already gone and his thighs spread wide over Tony’s, kneeling comfortably in his lap like he belongs, looking down at him with shiny eyes and dimples and cheeks painted pink by beard burn―

He seems happy enough.

Ensuring Peter’s joy and wellbeing would be a lot less complicated if Tony came equipped with the basic ability to deny himself the things he wants, but he’s already dived right in, gone far enough to render coming back impossible, so he might as well make it good for as long as it lasts.

Might as well try not to tear down what they’ve built, even though it’s mostly made of playing cards instead of bricks.

“Hey,” Peter says softly, cupping Tony’s face in his hands. “Are you with me?”

Tony blinks, eyes snapping up. Peter’ eyebrows are slightly raised, and he realizes he’d been holding on to the slight curve of Peter’s waist, doing absolutely nothing, for a count of ‘long enough to be weird’.

He drops a small kiss to Peter’s shoulder, another to the side of his throat. “Yep, right here,” he says, presses their foreheads together. “I got you.”

Peter smiles, and the sight of it is almost too much. It makes him look so fucking _pretty_.

“I got you too,” he whispers, tilts Tony’s head back with a finger to bring their mouths together. He lets out a quiet sigh at the feel of it, shoulders slumping forward as he tries to mash their bodies closer.

Tony trails a hand across Peter’s naked abdomen, up his chest, can feel the trail of goosebumps he leaves behind. Peter licks slowly, leisurely into his mouth, and Tony scrapes a nail against his nipple just because he wants to hear that punched-out little squeal he’s come to love.

Peter shivers, his head whips a little away, eyes pinched close like he’s trying to get his bearings.

“You doing good up there?”

“Yeah,” Peter breathes, back arching under Tony’s touch. He swallows, opens his eyes again and grins. It knocks the air out of Tony, it always does. “Very good.”

Peter starts kissing him again, unhurried, experimental, so unlike the vast majority of their fervent make-outs so far ―his nips at Tony’s lower lip like a question, he traces a thumb across Tony’s cheek, his other hand curls gently around Tony’s neck, moving up to thread through his hair.

Like this, it almost feels simple. Like this, it almost feels like it’s all working out. Tony hums into Peter’s mouth, grabs the cut of his hips, taking Peter’s weight as his body sags further into Tony’s.

Peter groans a little, hips shifting.

He runs his lips along the line of Tony’s jaw, catching at stubble, and his fingers, unexpectedly confident, start undoing buttons with impressive speed. He slides Tony’s shirt off his shoulders, his chest, down his arms, tosses it away, the brush of his fingertips tangling and flaming in Tony’s neurons and synapses.

Tony looks up, takes in his pink-tinged cheeks, his spit-slick lips, the unmistakable need in his eyes. If he was _that_ sort of guy, he’d be secretly writing poetry about the kid’s face, keep the pages stashed in a locked drawer with rose petals and pictures of him ―okay, he might be ridiculous in a way most people aren’t, but then, Peter’s amazing in a way most people aren’t.

It’s undoing him, a bit, having Peter so soft and achingly willing in his arms.

No, correction ―it’s undoing him a _lot_.

Peter’s sucking at his neck, hard and insistent, probably wanting to leave a mark. Tony should stop him, but can’t quite get the words out, can’t find the will to. Peter’s hips start grinding in a slow, steady rhythm, his cock, unmistakably hard, rubs up and down against Tony’s abs through his underwear.

“Want you,” Peter mutters, knees sliding across the mattress, and something hot and urgent he isn’t proud of rips through Tony.

He slides his hands down Peter’s back, tightens an arm around the dip of his waist and turns them over, deposits him on the bed more forcefully than he meant. Peter gasps as Tony hooks two thumbs into the elastic waistband of his underwear and tugs it down, away; his cock is flushed, a drop of pre-come slips out and onto his belly, and Tony’s mouth is suddenly very dry.

Peter’s hips buck up into nothing, that lovely flush spreading all the way down to his chest. “Tony,” he says, it’s almost a whine.

“Yeah?”

Tony leans down, bracketing Peter’s arms with his own. He doesn’t think he could get away even if an entire unit of the intensely trained agents roaming the compound’s other floors came in, grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled.

“ _Tony_ ,” Peter says again. His legs tremble as they come up to lock around Tony’s hips. His whole body clenches, he grinds up into Tony’s still clothed front ―it has to be painful, Tony thinks, alarmed, the buttons and zipper too much friction on his naked flesh, but he doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. “God, just―”

“Tell me,” Tony says, low and rough, a wave of adrenaline surging through him. “Tell me what you want.”

Peter whimpers. His cock leaks into the fabric of Tony’s pants, his thighs are clenched, taut like bowstrings.

“Do you wanna hear it―”

“Yes,” Tony breathes, throat tightening. Let it never be said that Tony Stark isn’t a complete and utter masochist. “Say it, Peter, baby―”

Peter’s fists clench into the sheets, it’ll be a proper miracle if he doesn’t rip them. It’s already a wonder, how they survived last night.  “Please,” he mumbles, riding the slant of Tony’s abdomen with short, awkward thrusts, “please, Tony, fuck me.”

It’s more than enough to make Tony’s brain short-circuit.

He presses his body into Peter’s, crushing him, pinning him down, grabbing both of Peter’s dainty wrists and pushing them roughly against the mattress before he can fully comprehend what he’s doing.

Peter’s more than strong enough to flip him over and off the bed, but he wouldn’t, he doesn’t. A strangled moan flies past his lips, he squirms into Tony’s hold, legs spasming as Tony doesn’t budge, suddenly too shocked by his own careless, harsh responsiveness to move.

“God,” Peter says on a broken exhale. His eyes are wide, startled. “I ― _Mr. Stark_.”

Tony holds very still, panting as he looks down at Peter. “I’m sorry―”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Peter says, lower body twitching up against Tony as if he can’t help it. “Don’t be, I― I liked that. Like it. Hold me down, move me around, do whatever you want, I like it.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

“You like being dominated?” Tony says, voice catching. He’s not entirely sure he wants to hear the answer to that. His hand’s already slipping away from one of Peter’s wrists, gaze flitting down to the soft pink lines his fingers leave behind.

Peter gives a small huff, turns to nuzzle his face into Tony’s palm.

“’m not sure, in general,” he mutters, soft and rushed like it’s a secret. He takes Tony’s thumb in his mouth, gives a gentle bite that makes Tony’s stomach lurch with want. Peter smiles, drops a feather-light kiss over where he sunk his teeth. “Only by you, I think. If it’s _you_ , yeah. Yes. Definitely yes.”

Tony’s hips give an involuntary jerk at that, cock twitching.

“Fuck,” he hisses, “ _fuck_. Don’t― you can’t say things like that.”

“I can’t?” Peter swallows, blinking up at Tony, owlish, all nervousness and excitement. “Or what?” he says, a little high-pitched, like he can’t quite believe he’s going there, like he’s got to drag the words out. “You gonna punish me, sir?”

“ _Kid_ ,” Tony says, and it’s wrecked, more moan than word, more desperation than anything.

His underwear’s a humid mess, he can feel every place where the goddamn zipper is pushing against his cock. He’s so hard it almost hurts not to move, not to press himself into him again, but this is―

This is _Peter_.

It’s Peter, _his_ Peter, naked and looking up at Tony with big eyes and a glossy mouth, jittery with anticipation and something as unbearably adolescent as being unsure of the next move in bed, and Tony can’t, he _can’t_.

“Not a kid,” Peter says, legs slowly sliding off from Tony’s waist. He puts his feet on the mattress, knees bent, splayed wide around Tony’s body, inviting.

“Not a kid,” Tony rushes to agree. “I know that. But this is your second time having sex, maybe we can work our way up to the kinkier stuff sometime later. Pretty sure I’ll still want you after this, your honor won’t be compromised, no need to do everything today. Let’s take it slow.”

“You don’t have to go slow for me,” Peter says, reaching up to kiss the corner of Tony’s mouth. His free hand, the one Tony isn’t still holding into the bed, curls into Tony’s hair, pulling a little. “I can take it, sir.”

He’ll kill him, Peter will fucking kill him.

 _And what a way to go_ , a backwater part of his mind provides, a little mean. Tony ignores it. One panic attack was more than enough for the day.

“I’m sure you can, Spider-Man,” he says, strained, trying not to let Peter see what those four words just did to him. He strokes a thumb across Peter’s hairline. “Just― humor me. Starting out by jumping off the deep end isn’t ideal.”

“So you think I need more practice first,” Peter says, and, wonderful, Tony has to aggressively push thoughts of ‘the birds and the bees’ away. Peter said he doesn’t want him to feel shitty about this, and the implication that he’s quite literally about to embark on a journey of teaching his barely not underage protégé how to have sex just doesn’t help with that.

At all.

“I’m saying there’s no need to rush.” He pets Peter’s hair, gingerly, like an apology. He leans down to lay little kisses across his forehead, his temples, the tip of his nose. “Let me take care of you for now, okay?”

Peter sighs, body gradually relaxing as Tony licks gently into his mouth, nudging it open, slipping his tongue in slow and careful. Tony needs to do this right. He needs―

“Okay,” Peter mutters when Tony comes up for air. He’s been stroking small circles into Peter’s wrists in what he really hopes is a soothing manner. “But. We’re revisiting this later.”

A short laugh bursts from Tony, unexpected. “If you want,” he says, sitting up, trying to find enough willpower to climb out of bed long enough to get off his pants and underwear. “At a later date.”

“At a later date,” Peter parrots back with a hint of a smirk, watching Tony as he fumbles through the nightstand drawer.

Tony swallows ―Peter looks like a painting on the bed, beautiful and sinful and floating in a puffy expanse of white cotton, lithe body splayed open. Last night they’d kept the lights dimmed ―it’s different to see him like this, with sunlight streaming in, bathing him in gold. Unable to look away, his hand bumps around until he finds the lube and a strip of condoms entirely by feel.

Peter’s mind must be whirling somewhere along the same lines, because he sits up on his elbows, gaze sliding down Tony’s body like he’s seeing him for the first time.

“You’re so hot,” Peter blurts out, and his eyes widen, for a moment he looks like might actually clamp a hand over his mouth.

Tony grins, even as his stomach flutters weakly. He climbs back onto the bed, scooting close to where Peter’s stretched out in the middle. “It’s been a while since I was voted Sexiest Man Alive and I was beginning to worry, but hey, apparently I still got it.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but then he gives Tony a sunny smile. “Yeah, you do,” he says, a hint of mischief in it. “I mean, I’ve been jerking off to you for _years_ and you’re still as―”

“Okay, let’s not discuss how very pivotal I’ve been in your sexual awakening,” Tony says hastily, reaching for a pillow to tuck under Peter’s lower back, turning his face so that Peter doesn’t have to see how he just effectively melted Tony’s brain a little. “Comfortable?”

Peter nods, spreading his legs wider. He’s still fully hard, despite the interruptions, which ―well, it’s impressive. Tony’s impressed.

Or maybe he’s just not eighteen any more.

Peter shifts, toes curling into the sheets, eyes fixed intently on Tony’s hands as he cracks open the bottle of lube. The sound of the cap rattles somewhere in Tony’s brain, his hands tremble slightly as he moves closer to Peter and slowly coats his fingers.

“Okay?” he asks, kisses Peter’s cheek.

Peter swallows. He grabs Tony’s slick hand by the wrist and guides it down, quick and without preamble, not stopping until Tony’s pressing a finger gently against his entrance. Peter sucks in a sharp breath, chest rising and falling. “Okay. Very much okay.”

Tony takes his time. He mouths at Peter’s neck, down his chest, murmurs soft praise into his skin, fingers only rubbing back and forth for several long, blissful minutes ―by the time he pushes the first one inside, Peter’s a panting, quivering mess under him, eyes squeezed shut, head tossed to the side.

“Mr. Stark,” he gasps, opening up around Tony, scorching hot and perfect.

“Hey,” Tony says, tangling his free hand with Peter’s. “I thought we were past that.”

Peter huffs, but his hips are already rocking upwards into the movement of Tony’s hand, and a throaty moan escapes him when Tony starts sliding in a second finger, slow.

“ _Tony_ ,” he amends, a shiver wracking him head to toe.

“Better,” Tony hums, goes back to kissing Peter’s throat and listening to his breathless whimpers as he slowly fucks him open with two fingers, then three. Peter’s feet slip on the sheets, hips jerking off the bed, and before long he’s babbling wonderful, plaintive nonsense into Tony’s ear, high, desperate, begging, cursing, moaning Tony’s name loud and keening.

Tony doesn’t always know how to be a good person, but he does know how to do _this_.

At some point Peter’s hand, shaking and sweaty, disentangles from his, and Tony feels nails digging into his shoulder. “Mr. ― _Tony_ , I ― _ah_ , I love your dick, it’s an amazing dick, but ― _fuck_ ―it’s not that _huge_ , I’m _ready,_ just fuck me―”

Tony puffs out a laugh, but his thoughts are scrambled, nonsensical, everything he has focused on Peter’s moans, Peter’s body, the beads of sweat rolling between his collarbones and the way his cock is dripping pre-come onto his toned stomach, the maddening play of sunlight on his face.

He blindly reaches for a condom and rolls it on without bothering to look, eyes glued to Peter’s lower lip, trapped between his teeth. He’s almost in physical pain with how much he wants him.

“Are you―”

“ _Yes_ ,” Peter hisses, tipping his head to look at Tony lining himself up, gaze so focused and insistent it’s almost a glare. “I’m ready, I’m sure, I’m―”

He breaks off into a soundless gasp as Tony sinks inside, as gently as he can manage.

It’s torture to pace himself, not to push forward and fuck into him with abandon, but he holds still, watching Peter’s face. His eyelashes are fluttering, he’s blinking rapidly up at the ceiling, mouth open slack, but there are no obvious signs of discomfort. Tony clenches a hand into the sheets, reaches up with the other to brush Peter’s hair away from his forehead.

“Good?” he says, voice barely above a whisper, and Peter nods furiously.

“Yeah,” he pants, wrapping his arms around Tony’s back, clamping his thighs down on Tony’s hips, holding him close with a violent sort of urgency, like he’s afraid Tony might disappear if he lets go. “Move, Tony, please―”

Tony does.

He rolls his hips slow and careful at first, pushing only a little deeper every time, hands roaming over Peter’s body, mapping every gorgeous softness and edge, until the legs around his waist start squeezing, nudging him on ―Peter’s cry when Tony drives in harder, once, twice, punches straight through him, leaves his insides torn and burning.

“You feel so good,” Tony says, mumbles the words into Peter’s matted hair, “you’re so tight, so good, so _fucking_ good―”

“Oh god―”

Peter’s body shakes under him, he’s already close. He turns his face into Tony’s palm and rocks upwards to meet Tony’s thrusts, clumsy at first, but getting more and more fluid with every slide of Tony’s cock inside him, his tiny moans rising in pitch, head lolling back.

Tony loses time. They move together, and when he reaches down between their bodies Peter makes a low, almost hurt sound like a sob, body convulsing as his heels dig into Tony’s lower back, nails scratching frantically down Tony’s arms.

“Tony,” he whimpers, “ _Tony_ ―”

Tony squeezes his eyes shut, can’t help the growl that rises up his throat as Peter tightens around him in pulsing waves, coming with sort, hitching breaths that Tony won’t ever be able to get out of his head.

He follows only a few seconds after, tucking his face into Peter’s throat, fucking into him with rough, stuttered thrusts, groans muffled and desperate into Peter’s skin. Peter holds him through it even as he lays there limp and satisfied, boneless in the sheets, muttering Tony’s name again and again, small and quiet.

Tony never wants him to stop saying it.

He gathers Peter in his arms, after, as they try to catch their breath. Stares at the ceiling when Peter lays his head on Tony’s chest with a sigh, his fingers trailing the scar from the arc reactor, moving slow and reverent over gnarled flesh.

“Love you,” Peter whispers, lets the words hang between them, but it doesn’t feel too heavy, not as frightening as before.

Tony rubs a hand over Peter’s back, pulls him closer, kisses the top of his head. Peter’s smiling, melting into him, and Tony thinks ― _maybe_.

Maybe they can make this work. Maybe they’ll be fine.)

 

 

 


End file.
